What a Hero Dares (9 page)

“Now you’re angry. I apologize. Beauty opens many doors, especially with stupid men, but you couldn’t bring yourself to the point of giving over your body to the guard, even believing Max dead. You love my grandson. Which more completely answers your fifth question. He’s been a near madman since what we’ll henceforth only refer to as the incident. He takes chances he shouldn’t take, almost as if he has no regard for his life. I had to put a stop to it, and deduced that a meeting between the two of you was the only obvious answer.”

“I should find this impossible to believe, except for the fact I’m here.”

“By a roundabout way, yes, you are. Tariq made some inquiries, sent me his conclusions, and I was assured of your innocence and this Anton Boucher’s guilt. He’s fled, by the way, and I expect Max will soon be in hot pursuit. Now, my dear, I’ll leave you and Max to for God’s sake
talk
to each other so this old woman isn’t forced to have one of her grandchildren underground before her.”

Tears pricked at the back of Zoé’s eyes. Beatrice Redgrave, this woman who knew everything, believed her, believed
in
her. Richard Borders believed in her. She owed so much to so many.

“We have spoken,” she said, hating the slight catch in her voice. “Max...understands everything now.”

“Oh, dear, I don’t like the sound of that. Pride is rearing its ugly head, isn’t it, along with unhealthy measures of guilt and regrets on both sides, I’d imagine? Love is frustratingly complicated, which is why I’ve always striven to avoid it, until Richard, bless him.” Trixie raised her hands in surrender. “But I’m no romantical Cupid, pet, and I’m done interfering. It’s up to the two of you now.”

“Yes, ma’am, it is,” Zoé said, dropping into a curtsy. “I understand now why Max so adores you.”

“Bah! They’re all terrified of me, how next I am to embarrass them. Now go on, leave this old woman to the necessary trials of hiding the ravages of time before we’re called to luncheon.”

* * *

“I
DON
’
T
SEE
why I can’t meet her, at least,” Lady Katherine Redgrave complained, pouting as she directed her maid to lay the last pile of clothing on the narrow attic cot. “Gideon says she’s beautiful, and with the most fascinating blond hair shot through with sunlight. Have you noticed how poetical Giddy’s gotten since Jessica? What an adventure you two must have lived on the Continent. I envy you so much. Not that Simon would have approved, but I believe the two of us well-suited to spying and skullduggery, and all that sort of thing. Max? I would be ever so much more comfortable if you’d stop shooting daggers at me with your eyes.”

“And nicer still if you’d shut up and leave,” he responded still attempting to convince his brain that his baby sister was now, seemingly within a heartbeat, a woman. “Kate? You’re happy?”

Her smile was near beatific. “I still pinch myself every morning, unable to believe such happiness. Simon is—”

Remembering Gideon’s warning, Max got to his feet, dropping a kiss on his sister’s cheek even as he grabbed hold of her shoulders and directed her toward the door. “I promise to arm myself with a strong drink and hear all about you and your impossibly wonderful Simon the instant this mess is over. Zoé will be back here at any moment, and I’ve already ordered our mounts saddled.”

“You’ll be careful, won’t you? This Boucher, he’s a part of the Society, that’s what Gideon told us. It’s not as if he’s stumbling around somewhere out there, lost and without resources. Simon and Valentine want to go with you, or at least send along a few of our new friends. We all feel much safer with the men watching over us, and some of their wives have helped bolster the number of servants. One of them is quite the cook—one of the men, actually.”

“Pirates. Yes, that’s just what I need. And nobody knows who they are?”

“Simon does, but he won’t tell us, not even me, and believe me, I’ve tried
everything
to get it out of him.”

“I could have lived the remainder of my life without hearing that, and died a happy man,” Max said, continuing to maneuver Kate toward the door. He gave her a playful slap on her behind. “Scoot.”

Max left the door open even after he heard Kate’s retreating steps on the stairs, and then walked to the window to look out on what would be a fine morning, other than for the fact there were people out there somewhere who wanted the Redgraves dead. People they’d always believed loyal friends, men they’d played with when they were all children, women who had taken care of their comforts, wiped their noses, and even given their bottoms a good swat when they misbehaved.

The Coopers were now enemies. After generations of serving the earls of Saltwood, they had joined with the Society. They’d sacrificed one of their own in an attempt to assassinate Trixie, for God’s sake. Redgrave Manor had gone, seemingly overnight, from a refuge and home to an armed camp under attack. The knowledge was still difficult to swallow, let alone digest.

Now Gideon and Jessica had ridden off on a flying visit to London, to take control of the gossip there thanks to the unfortunately public attempt on Trixie’s life, and to gather up another member of the Society’s Devil’s Thirteen named Axbridge, the man identified in the journals as Hammer. The man was head of a private bank, responsible for turning opium into gold. He’d been left where he was for a time, but now he’d be reunited with his friend Burn, and questioned about the Society. They’d wanted to turn him over to Perceval as more proof of their theory of treason and invasion, but now they needed him more.

“Max?”

He turned around, to see Zoé standing in the doorway clad in a mostly flattering morning gown. Her gaze shifted to the piles on the cot. “Where am I going?”

“We’re both going, if you agree. My brothers have things under control here, leaving me with an obvious mission.”

“Anton.” She was already examining the clothing, holding a dark blue jacket to one of Kate’s riding habits against her, checking its size. “I’ll need my own boots and leathers. Where do we start?”

“I have your boots here, but your leathers are still being repaired after your dunk into the Channel. But no questions? You’ve been with Trixie this past half hour or more. You have to have questions.”

She put down the blue jacket and picked up a forest-green one with discreet golden epaulettes and frog closings. “At least a dozen. You’ll answer them if and when you want to once we’re on our way. He’s already gotten quite a head start on us. Where are my knives? Or does your trust go only so far?”

Max reached behind him and produced the knives, a stiletto she kept in a specially made sheath in her right boot and the two smaller throwing knives she secreted around her body. “The horses are waiting.”

She looked at him and obviously made up her mind, her fingers going to the front buttons of the morning gown.

He held his breath as the gown slid to the floor, leaving her in a chemise made for a less generously endowed woman, her long straight legs now bare as she kicked off the too-large silken slippers.

“Hand me one of those,” she said, pointing to a stack of white shirts before grabbing her hair in both hands and quickly twisting the long locks into a knot at her nape.

She was thinner than he remembered, her collarbones more prominent. The scar on her left forearm, a protective wound courtesy of a French soldier who had been fatally introduced to her knife a moment later, didn’t look as red and angry as it had the last time he’d seen it, when he’d sewed up the wound after getting her drunk enough to be singing naughty ditties with him while he stitched.

His gut clenched. If there was one thing he never would have questioned about Zoé, it was her courage.

He held out the shirt and she pushed her arms into it, dealing swiftly with the buttons before tucking the ends into the divided skirt she’d pulled on while he’d been staring at her like a simpleton.

She sat on the edge of the cot and held up one slim bare foot. “The horses are waiting, Max.”

“Enjoying yourself?” he asked her as he helped her on with her boots. A simple, almost domesticated exercise, although he much preferred removing her boots as he straddled her legs and she provocatively traced her fingertips over his bare back...

She stood up, stamping her feet, and slid the knife into the right boot. “I think I might be,” she said as she reached for the jacket. “It’s not as if you’ve never helped me dress.”

Or undress,
Max pointed out silently, picking up a saddlebag from the chair and tossing it onto the cot. “We may return today, or be gone for two. Take only whatever else you absolutely need, and we’ll be on our way.”

“Could you possibly be more vague?” Still, she did as he said before balancing the saddlebag over her shoulder. “Would it be too much if I were to ask for an apple or something else to break my fast?”

“Some grinning hulk who calls himself Jacko promised a basket of food waiting for us with the horses. We’re leaving via the kitchens. Otherwise, we’d have to pass through the gauntlet my family is probably organizing right now. Don’t forget your hat.”

She looked down at the dark green shako hat with its military gold braid. “Heaven save me, I should have chosen the blue,” she grumbled, pulling the thing down on her head in a jaunty angle.

Max tried not to register the way a few curving strands of hair framed Zoé’s perfect face, or the way the jacket of the riding habit nipped in at her slim waist, or how the intoxicating memory of the taste of her had come slamming into his head when she’d allowed the morning gown to slide down over her artfully flared hips.

They’d been lovers. Never really friends. Lovers, intimate in every way possible. Now they were neither. What joined them now was one man, Anton Boucher, and their pursuit of him, the destruction of the evil who had destroyed them and planned the destruction of the Redgraves, Redgrave Manor, perhaps all of England itself.

“Max? The horses, remember? We have to go.”

Her voice seemed to come to him from a long way off. A lifetime ago. It was sweet, and gentle, and almost loving. Or he simply wanted that to be the case.

“This isn’t going to work, you know,” he told her, believing it only right to warn her. “Whatever else we’ve lost, given or thrown away or never had, we’ll never be free of each other. Not in some ways. I’m not that civilized. I’ll always want you, never stop desiring you. Are you still willing to go with me?”

She adjusted the saddlebag on her shoulder and headed for the door.

Max followed, his heart both light and heavy, as he and Zoé set off to dance together on the edge of the knife for what might be the last time.

CHAPTER FIVE

A
NTON
B
OUCHER
CURSED
under his breath. “Damn her eyes. I was right, it is her. I wanted to take them on one at a time, not together.”

The blond man
harrumphed
from his spot behind a concealing bush. “That’s the woman you thought you saw on the beach? A pretty piece. Certainly doesn’t look dangerous.”

Anton kept his eyes on Max and Zoé as they turned their mounts toward a dirt path leading into an enormous stand of trees. “Keep thinking that way when you encounter her,
vous hulk sans cervelle,
and it will be your last earthly thought, I guarantee it.”

“Yet you caught her,” the woman beside him pointed out. “It sounds to me as if caging the pretty bird rather than slitting its throat and drinking its blood was your mistake. Or do you covet her?”

“He covets anything in skirts, and maybe more,” spat the man Boucher had just called a brainless hulk. “Why do you think he chose to ride a mare?”

The woman laughed, a rather tinkling sound eerily edged with what could only be termed pure meanness. “Do you want her, Anton? It can be arranged.”

The Frenchman licked his suddenly dry lips. “Spread before me on the altar? Her face gone flat with terror as I approach in my mask and cloak.”

“Perhaps carrying a lit black candle, to drip wax on her body, to mark all the places you will later worship with your mouth, with the tip of your knife. Because I know you, Anton,” the woman purred in clear delight, putting a hand to his crotch. “Nothing arouses you like someone else’s pain. Even the mere thought of it wakes your flaccid manhood. I still carry fading bruises from our last encounter, don’t I, Niall? Tell him how much you hate him for that.”

The blond man repeated dully, “I hate him for that.”

Anton laughed. “But you’ll do nothing about it, because she won’t let you. You haven’t guessed why? It’s because you worship her as some sort of goddess to be worshipped, while your
exalted leader
has a taste for—”

“Shut up, Boucher,” the woman commanded. “You’re not indispensable, not now, while you’re on this side of the Channel, your enormous failure no more than twelve hours old. I should be enjoying the company of my pawn, rather than watching him ride into the trees with the blonde bitch.”

Anton felt the same frisson of fear he’d experienced last night, when he’d broken into the clear after climbing up a steep incline to escape the shore, and run straight into the woman now expressing her displeasure once again. She was brilliant, but also fatally twisted somewhere deep in her black soul. He had to dispatch her at some point, but for now, his hands were figuratively tied. He needed her, and he needed the handsome blond baboon, as well. For just a little while longer. For that, for the future he saw for himself, he would allow her to believe, just this little while longer, that she was in charge.

“There are other Redgraves,” he pointed out quickly. “It didn’t have to be him. I would think any of them would do. Most especially the old lady. Max used to speak about her as if she was dipped in gold. I imagine they’d do most anything to have her back in one piece.”

And then he dared stick his neck out over the chopping block. Ah, pride. If he didn’t watch himself, he’d pay for that pride with his life. “Not that you’ve had many blazing successes here. Our meeting place at Fernwood destroyed. Redgrave’s own supposedly exquisite vault of pleasure burnt to the ground, the ceremonial
heart
of the Society reduced to ashes. And how many of your precious Thirteen deserted, dead, or otherwise lost to us? Damn, woman, you’ve begun killing your own. I arrived to a debacle.”

“The Redgraves have proved more inventive than we supposed.”

“The Redgraves. A handful of pampered Englishmen, defeating your self-declared brilliance at every turn? How much are we staking our claim to Redgrave Manor rather than having been backed into the place as our last remaining refuge? Yet another full load of opium never to reach the city, leaving us powerless to convert it to the gold the emperor so desperately needs. He’s already losing patience with us as he begins to consider Russia, leaving England to its own destiny. We have to draw him back into believing he can safely trust us. More immediately, I have suppliers in Ostend awaiting my return and their share of that gold. You’ve compromised my safety, not to mention broken the rules as laid down by your own Society.”

“I care nothing for your safety, and leagues less for the
rules
. With me, there are no rules save those that suit me. The Redgraves have proved more troublesome than we’d hoped, that’s all,” the woman declared as fire flashed in her eyes. “You forget our successes. The sabotaged foodstuffs meant for Wellington’s troops. The diverted shipments of small arms and other supplies. The men in position all these months, prepared to seize the Martello towers once we’ve given the signal. The Society growing in spite of some small losses, our members neatly infiltrated into all areas of the government, the banks, the weaponry manufactories, primed to follow our commands. We safely landed and continue to successfully both hide and feed over one thousand Frenchmen. You call that failure? You were to bring us one man.
One man
. Again, dear Anton, you’re on
my
side of the Channel now. You should be fearful of placing your head on your pillow at night until you redeem yourself, or you might wake to find your tongue on the floor, along with other pieces you’d surely miss.”

The blond hulk smiled. “The Exalted Leader
is
the rules. She does not
follow
anyone.”

And clearly she wasn’t accustomed to being questioned. But Anton believed he had at last found her weak point—her own precious vanity. Anton leaned in front of the woman to smile at her companion. “Is she always like this? How long has it been since you last saw your testicles?”

“Ignore him, darling—I know just where they are, don’t I?” She returned her glare to Anton. “Those two fools had a picnic basket tied to her saddle, as if they don’t fear us. That in itself is an insult I can’t abide.” The woman got to her feet, slapping bits of grass from her deep brown leggings. “Are we going to follow them, or not?”

Anton rose, as well. “That depends. Do you want to do what they want you to do?”

She let out an exasperated sigh. “They expect us to follow them?”

“If they hadn’t wanted somebody to see them, we wouldn’t have seen them. I told you. You take care of keeping your pathetic Devil’s Thirteen and the rest of your minions in check, and I’ll handle the Redgraves. Five men, that’s all I’ll need. You’d need an army, madam, and that army can’t be here until the Redgraves and the threat they hold for us are eliminated. Now, are you English entirely lacking in hospitality, or am I going to be offered something in the way of luncheon? Preferably something I don’t need a chisel and hammer to cut through, yes?”

* * *

Z
OÉ
’
S
BAY
MARE
delicately followed the black stallion as Max led the way through the trees, leaving one narrow path only to pick up another heading in yet a third direction until she had to admit herself totally turned about, lost. The tall, leafy trees all but hid the sunlight, and it was nearly impossible to know if they were still moving to the west more than any other direction.

If anyone had been following them, either on horseback or on foot, she was certain Max had managed to confuse and elude them a quarter hour ago.

At last they emerged into a clearing divided by hedgerows, a vast expanse of rolling farmland left fallow. Crossing the field would leave them exposed for an uncomfortably long time, especially after the cover of the trees.

“Where are we? Surely not still on Redgrave land.”

“Embarrassingly, yes. We call it the West Run. Our grandfather acquired it when the family living here died in a fire a long time ago.” He stood in the stirrups. “If you’ll look to your right, you’ll see a copse of trees grown up around the remains of the Manor house. Trixie decreed it and the graveyard remain, the graves kept in good repair. I suppose Gideon will have to assign someone else to tend to them, now that the Coopers are gone. Do you want to picnic there?”

“Thank you, but there must be more pleasant places. Such as right here, with our backs to the trees and able to see anyone who dares approach from the fields.” She smiled at him. “Which is another way of saying my stomach has begun to believe my throat cut. I’m starving.”

“Yes, you should eat.”

“And what does that mean?” she asked, stung. Wasn’t it enough she knew she was still too thin? Her leathers all but hung on her.

“Nothing. I meant nothing. Just that you should eat if that’s what you want to do. Are you sure you don’t want to visit the copse? There’s a working well, and the stones are quite extraordinary. Trixie ordered them. And we’d have a better chance to see anyone approaching from any side.”

“I don’t want to visit a graveyard, Max.”

“Very well.” They dismounted, and Max tied the horses’ leads to nearby branches while Zoé unrolled the wool blanket strapped behind Max’s saddle and lifted down the straw picnic basket secured to her own.

Max smiled at her efficiency. “You’re not worried Anton or some others will consider us vulnerable?”

“I thought we were rather hoping that’s exactly what they’d think.”

“Maybe some of them would hazard it, but not Anton, and we can rest assured he’s told them just that. We’re going to have to try something completely new, I’m afraid, to bring him out in the open. He’s too familiar with the way we work.” Max tossed a brace of pistols to the blanket before sprawling himself next to them, one bent arm used to prop up his head as he looked at the basket. “Is there chicken? I think I smell chicken.”

Zoé rolled her eyes, then lifted open the split top of the basket, to begin laying out its contents. “Chicken,” she said, tossing him a golden-skinned leg and thigh he snagged deftly as he sat up. “Cheese, a lovely fresh loaf, apples. Oh, strawberries! You have a succession house. I wonder if it stretches to a banana tree or two.”

“Or more. Trixie brought back plants and trees from all her travels, to the point where Gideon had to order another greenhouse, and then a third. Careful there, madam. You’ll probably want to retain all ten fingers.”

Zoé had withdrawn a large knife from the basket, and was employing it to slice chunks from the half-round of fragrant cheese. “I know how to handle a knife,” she said testily as she reached for the loaf and began slicing it, as well.

“Everywhere but in the kitchens,” Max pointed out as he slipped a pair of blue-tinted spectacles from his pocket and slipped them on, only to lower them to peer at her overtop the glass. His accompanying grin did just what he’d probably wanted it to do.

Zoé felt herself melting. Then she felt the sickening, deep slide of the knife across the pad of her left thumb. “Damn you, Max Redgrave, you
wished
that on me!” she said, dropping the knife and sticking her injured thumb into her mouth to suck away the blood and the sting.

He had his hands on hers before she could insist he leave her alone, and a white linen square quickly wrapped around her thumb. “It’s not too deep. We need to keep pressure on it for a few minutes, that’s all.”

He was close enough for her to smell the cologne he favored; it had always had the power to make her stomach clench in reaction, in anticipation. He measured her with his eyes. “You’re not feeling faint, are you? Of course you are, look how pale you’ve gone. Lack of food, most probably. Here, rest your head in my lap and keep pressure on the cut.” His grin was devilish. “I’ll feed you strawberries until you recover.”

“Seduction, Max? You did warn me,” she said, pulling her hand free, handkerchief and all. “But no. I won’t say I’m not interested, because that would be a lie. My body recognizes you even when my mind reminds me no good can come from temporary physical pleasure. The past won’t leave us alone, no matter how hard we try. So thank you, Max, but no.”

“How very polite, and how very wrong. We’ll both succumb at some point, Zoé, and sooner better than later. Otherwise, it will be impossible to devote our full concentration on finding Anton, and that could be more dangerous to us than daring to locate what you consider lost.” His message delivered, he lifted her injured hand to his lips, pressed a kiss against her knuckles and let her go.

Maybe she was wrong. Maybe he was attempting to make up for abandoning her. Maybe she still hadn’t forgiven him...even as she’d made certain he would abandon her. Maybe he felt pity for her. That would be the worst. Pity.

“Max?” He’d pushed the glasses slightly higher on his nose. She could still see his eyes, but she couldn’t read them. “I’m sorry. It’s simply too soon, too easy not to be a mistake.”

“Wine?” he asked casually in return, as he lifted a bottle from the basket and showed it to her. “Gideon keeps an exemplary cellar. Although it would seem this Jacko fellow forgot glasses. Do you mind? We’ve shared the same bottle before. Remember that night in Madrid, when we—”

“Max, for God’s sake, take those ridiculous spectacles off, shut up and look at me. If we’re going to find Anton and this damned Society of yours, I agree. We have to settle this. I said something I thought important, and your only response was to offer me wine?”

“Settle this? And how do we do that, Zoé?” he asked as he removed the spectacles and slid them back into the inside pocket of his hacking jacket. “We never did love each other. Isn’t that what you said? I want to prove you wrong, but I don’t know how to do that, and I can’t help thinking you may be right. I turned my back on you. I walked away. I did my best to chalk you up as a mistake, and move on.”

Zoé nodded. “I deliberately hurt your pride, whether I meant well or not. There must have been another way to handle Anton than the one I chose. I’ve had months to consider them. A silent signal to you, one of those damn bird whistles you taught me—anything. Instead, I made you question your judgment, and every word you and I ever said to each other, every time we whispered love words while locked in each other’s arms...”